Bryan Joiner

Why then I

Category: Random

June 26, 2007

Coffee

As I sit at my office, foot jittering up and down on my knee, I got to wondering: how much coffee does one city block’s worth of workers and residents drink in a single morning? It’s got to be a lot, especially around here. We do not suffer from a lack of choices. In fact, we have the coffee chain. I discussed this with a friend the other night, and now I bring it to the world.

The first link on the coffee chain is the coffee within the office. We always have a warm pot going, just in case there’s some visitor who might desire a cup or an employee who doesn’t feel like leaving the building/spending money for their caffeine fix. The abject horrendousness of this daily brew is mitigated by the hazelnut and french vanilla creamers we stock by the hundreds; without these delightful little devils, the Folgers or whatever it is would only be fit for weed control, paint removal or lawnmower fuel. The most disturbing part of this brew is that at the bottom of every cup there’s a grainy residue: the grounds have bounced around in their foil packaging long enough that they are small enough to regularly sneak through the filter. You are quite literally drinking dirt at the end. So I try to stay away from this stuff. But it being free and all, I don’t always succeed.

If the work coffee doesn’t do it for you, there’s the deli across 30th street.

The deli is not one of these New York “delis” that are really glorified bodegas. This is an honest-to-God Midtown deli, with hot and cold food buffets, a sushi bar, make-your-own salad station and everything, and the coffee does the place justice. It’s $1 for a small cup a quarter more for a slightly bigger one, and there are all sorts of flavors, from regular (which sometimes I choose) to vanilla creme (often) to french roast (more often) to chocolate raspberry twirl (zero percent). This is the default option: it’s good enough and cheap enough to work in most situations, and paying with an even dollar is always a plus. I’m having the vanilla creme right now. It is delicious. The establishment — named Au Bon Goût — also has an iced coffee bar, whereupon you make your own takeaway cup of the beverage, an idea which puts mere iced coffee slingers to shame.

But suppose you want more! Across 31st Street is Dunkin’ Donuts. I think the best thing I can say about Dunkin’ Donuts coffee — to add to the long list of plaudits sang by pretty much everyone — is that it’s fucking awesome.

Which leads us, at long last… to the Starbucks. Located a daunting block and a half away, it is the third best tasting coffee available (beating only the office pot) and the most expensive. But Holy Shit, does it do the trick. All the other brands give me a coffee buzz. Starbucks gives me a life buzz. And I get the smallest one. There’s really no way to describe it, or no need to, as everyone reading has downed some whether they liked it or not. They could slap an age limit on that stuff and I wouldn’t even blink. It could probably use one.

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June 25, 2007

Back, Sort Of, And For Not Very Long

I’m finally back at my office, with some time to kill. I once said that I do not write blog entries from here. I was mistaken.

Just to catch up those to whom I haven’t spoken in the past couple weeks:

• Friday before last, I learned that my grandfather had passed away. He was 90 years old and in quickly declining health, so it was somewhat expected. I left the following day for Chicago and stayed there for three days, through the wake. I saw my mother and helped her deal with everything by tending to my grandmother while she and my aunt planned everything. It was a tough time but everyone was generally so busy that it didn’t sink in until the actual wake. Right up until then, my grandmother and I laughed and goofed around like we always do — as the first of 16 grandchildren, we have a special relationship, and goof around pretty much constantly. She is also 90 years old. They were married 57 years. My grandfather, whom we called “Dzia-Dzia,” or “JaJa,” a Polish play on “pop-pop,” I believe, was a WWII and Korean War veteran who was at a ballroom in Chicago after he was discharged when he saw my grandmother. He remembered her from 3rd grade, and asked her to dance, and they were married three months later (I think), and my mom was not too far behind. JaJa taught me to play chess, loved sports, used the library religiously, drank coffee and did crossword puzzles, and despite my amazing similarity to him in those respects, my brother Steven is basically the second incarnation of him in attitude and temperament. That’s a good thing. My mother told him this in his final hours, when several family members talked to him, including my grandmother, who told him she loved him and always would.

• I found out this news as I exited the train station on Friday morning near my office. When I arrived, I found that someone had broken into our office and stolen several items but exactly one computer: mine. The loss of my photographs and iTunes music pales in comparison to the family loss, but sucks nonetheless. The culprit was kind enough to leave a backpack full of personal information such as a telephone number, address and list of items he had stolen from other places in addition to his crowbar and cartoon caper-style black ski mask. This is true. The cops were loving it, but alas, no word on whether they’ve tracked him down after 10 days.

• I returned home from Chicago on Monday evening; the following day was the first day of the three-day Licensing Show, the once-a-year domestic trade show held at the Javits Center on the West Side of Manhattan. This is probably an entry in and of itself, but during the show I got my picture taken with chimpanzees and live penguins; saw the actor Tyrese and wrestler Kane; and procured a bottle of a Deep Throat-branded energy drink. Not the CIA Deep Throat.

• Saturday evening I participated in an all-night Cancer Relay at a Queens park. I walked 53 laps and change, which is just over a half-marathon’s worth, but my friend Ryan pulled off a full 105 laps, a full marathon. The goal is not to walk as much as possible (it is, instead, to have a team member walking at all hours of the night), but we get bored without competition. He finished at 7 a.m.

• And the good news for the future – I’m going to Hong Kong on Saturday for work. There is a Hong Kong Licensing Show, and apparently they really want attendees, so they’re flying me out there. Everyone who has been to Hong Kong mentions the same things: 1) Eat a lot. 2) Go up the mountain and take the ferry. 3) The airport. Any other suggestions are appreciated.

That’s all for now as I have some actual work to do. Kind of.

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June 7, 2007

Really?

To the guy who honked at me when I was in the crosswalk yesterday… really? I was walking across 29th street on my way to the park for lunch when I heard you honk. Since I’ve been on cold medicine all week, it didn’t immediately register that you were honking at me — there were several people in the intersection, and none of them were cars. When I got to the other side of the street, I looked back at you in attempt to make a snap judgment as to What Your Problem Was when I saw it: the address on your side door. “Etc., etc., Scranton, PA.”

So here’s the little backstory I invented while mouthing the words “Fuck You” in your direction: you don’t come to the big city that often, and you hear everyone else honking, so you figure, “Hey, let’s give this a shot.” Only here’s what you don’t realize: you don’t honk at pedestrians in the crosswalk. It is your job to sit there and Keep Absoluely Quiet, unless I’m on some sort of conveyance, in which case you have Mayor Michael Fucking Bloomberg’s permission to play that funky music, white boy (approved conveyances include a bicycle, segway or your mother). You probably learned your lesson from my stares and those of the other crossers around me, so hopefully you’re good to go from now on. Unless you’re just pissed off that NBC emasculated your hometown. Can’t help you there.

To my cold… really? Four days and counting? I could barely pull myself out of bed this morning and I’ve done nothing but mend to you since Sunday evening. On Monday I tried to deny your existence, because I had unimpeachably better plans that were a long time coming, but in the end I had to cancel them. Fine. I received a slight life Monday evening and Tuesday morning, leading me to believe you were a 24-hour bug… but no. The rest of Tuesday and all of Wednesday were completely hellish. All this for what, playing a little softball in the rain on Sunday? Please. That’s hardly fair (especially considering we won the game). Then I biked home, which surely exacerbated the problem. Would you rather that I had driven, destroying your Earthly paradise, God? (Or whomever?) I didn’t think so. Let’s cut me a little break here and end this right now.

To The Wire… really? You’re really this good? I started season three last night, and you continue to amaze me. I had watched seasons one and two at breakneck pace, which was a mistake. The Wire, it has often been said, is like a novel, and I burnt myself out on it too quickly. Now I’m ready to handle more adventures of McNulty, Stringer and the gang. It’s really the second-best TV show I’ve ever seen, and the least repeatable (The Sopranos is the best, but it’s more easily digestable). I took an hour break between the episodes last night, and that made all the difference. To top it off David Simon is a (far-flung) family friend, to the point where my beloved mother told me recently, “So-and-so Simon is doing this, so-and-so Simon is doing that, David Simon is still doing The Wire…” which was a hoot. I’m on it. Gotta love mom, though. Hi mom.

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June 6, 2007

Allergies

I just took an allergy pill. I have been taking allergy and cold pills for the last two days, as a combination sore throat and stuffy nose has sidelined me from any real activities. Thankfully there has been nothing to do at work – and I mean quite literally nothing – so all I’ve done is pester friends via chat and make updates to my Verizon phone plan. I need more text messages, especially when my voice sounds like it does. It hurts to talk, and every conversation quickly morphs into, “Wait, are you sick?” Given that I’m naturally verbose, I will respond with some babble followed by my standard answer: “Yes, but I always sound this way.” And I do. I have a naturally scratchy voice, as do both of my brothers, but mine is unsurprisingly the worst. Maybe the allergy pill will make it better. We’re about to find out.

One thing the allergy pill will almost certainly do is knock me the fuck out. Every day for the last three days, I’ve taken one of these pills in the late afternoon, and every day I’ve taken an involuntary nap that has ended around 8 p.m. I’m beginning to think that this particular dosage – for “Extreme Allergies – is less of an allergy cure than a full-blown sleeping pill. Okay, now I’m fairly sure that it is a full-blown sleeping pill: I have to rest my eyes between every sentence. It’s a beautiful day outside, and I would like to spend it doing something, but no: I’m pasted to the couch. In the long run, I’ll be happy I did this. But in the short run, it’s quite galling.

Now I’m losing it, quick. My allergies have almost gone away completely, which is great, but any sort of movement is hard (I paused between “great” and “but” to rest). At least I know dinner will be cheap tonight – there’s no way I’m going out to get anything. I’ll make do with whatever mishmosh is around here. That means rice and beans, macaroni and cheese, canned vegetables or cereal. I realize that at age 29 I should not be eating cereal for dinner, but it is so easy and delicious that it’s hard to resist. Of course, all of this is contingent on my getting off the coach. This is not likely.

(Whereupon the author fell asleep for two hours)

—

Also, just as quickly as it was created, The Sox Page was deleted to make more time for Barajas.

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May 31, 2007

Great Quote – Sam Walker

From Sam Walker’s Fantasyland:

Rotisserie baseball may be the most ridiculous duplication of effort in the history of human affairs, but that’s hardly a concern. For the next four days our universe begins with Paul Abbott and ends with Alec Zumwalt.

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May 29, 2007

Memorial Day By Numbers

Stripping bartenders, sleeping in the grass, rainy disco parties at the beach – it must be Memorial Day weekend! And let’s recap it, in numbers!

2 (number of celebrity sightings, Friday)
I woke up early Friday, still in pain from the night before, when our softball team went out for drinks. A friend was coming into the city from Atlanta, and as she does not know her way around the city very well, I was to meet her at the Port Authority despite my hangover (she offered to let me sleep in, but as I was already awake, I decided against it). I acquired a Dunkin Donuts Iced Coffee on the way to the train and sat all the way at the front, which put me off at 40th street for the 42nd Street station. I was walking on 41st Street when I saw Pete Milano, a friend from SpotCo., a company that handles many aspects of Broadway play advertising (a fellow softballer, he too was iced coffee-ing). This was celebrity sighting number one, the appetizer, as he was filming a Rent promo with Tamyra Gray of American Idol, season one. Now, I wouldn’t know Tamyra Gray if I used her as a toothpick – which I could have done, because she was the thinnest person I have ever seen – unless someone pointed her out to me, as Pete did, and I moved along quickly to my waiting friend at the Port Authority. Flash-forward: lunch has just been completed with said friend, and we are walking into Central Park via Columbus Circle, where we have just visited the Borders in the Time Warner Center. I got a free Nantucket Nectars pomegranate juice there – don’t ask me how. Anyhow, we’re waiting to cross the street when I see a platinum-blond, tube-topped woman with a stroller on my left, and it’s none other than Gwen Stefani with her once-famous husband and children. Now THAT’s a celebrity sighting. No doubt.

1 (number of birthday parties attended, Saturday)
I actually skipped a birthday party on Friday night because I was too tired to think. I was woken up late at night by some friends who were in our back yard, tending to Edgar, who had fallen asleep in the grass. I barely recovered in time for my friend Ryan’s birthday at Daisy May’s BBQ on the West Side. For our party of 10, we ordered two “Pork Butts,” which I learned is not in fact the rear end of the swine, but instead the shoulder (the actual butt? “Ham.”). After the festive feast – notable because the Red Sox were in the process of going 11.5 games up on the Yankees at the time. 11.5! – we went to the bar Circus, a free-popcorn-and-peanuts, cheap beer establishment that more than lived up to its name. To make a dreadfully – okay, extremely pleasantly – long story short, the bartender did a striptease, another bartender breathed fire off the bar, and Ryan and Ravi celebrated Ryan’s birthday by giving each other wrestling chops across the chest, a primitive, drunken act that is pretty much as entertaining as it gets. But I have said too much: you really had to be there.

7 or so (number of ribs eaten Sunday)
Sunday we had a barbecue in our backyard. I spent the first half of the day concerned that too many people were going to come, thereby lowering the number of delicious Casey-prepared ribs that each person would be allowed to enjoy, and the second half wondering if anyone was going to show up. In the end, we had just the right amount of food for everyone, and more than enough beer. Good times. Bonus good times for including our upstairs neighbors, with whom I wish to remain on good terms, and super crazy bonus Hellenic good times for learning that my only friend from Astoria is related to my next-door neighbors, a fact we learned when he showed up at their barbecue. As a child of a small, quiet town and of Mary Jo (who stressed good neighborly manners), I am always wary of making too much noise or generally riling my neighbors, but my inside source tells me they find Edgar and I to be “nice, quiet boys,” and even better, any knowing someone on the inside over there makes any possible problems that much easier to negotiate. I don’t mean to go on about it, but it makes me happy.

1 (number of rainy beach bars visited)
After the barbecue on Sunday, the party transferred itself to the Long Island City Water Taxi bar, the ingenious little three-year-old spot that faces Manhattan on Queens’ southwesterly most shore. It’s really just a large outdoor area with truckloads of imported sand, where you are free to drink (from their bar) and enjoy the best views of Manhattan maybe anywhere. On Sunday, there was to be (and was in fact) a professionally-run dance party, Turntables on the East River, a relocated offshoot of Turntables on the Hudson series, one event of which I attended last year. And it would have been great, except for two things: 1) it was pouring when I arrived, and 2) I was not on heavy drugs, which seemed to be the necessary condition for enjoying the party despite the rain (as the music was quite good for a dance party). I spent some time under the canopy that was set up for the DJs and live drum players, but moved back outside when the rain let up. I may have even cut loose for about 20 minutes on the dance floor with some members of our troupe, and there may be photographic evidence of this, before going home at the early hour of 1 p.m.

0 (number of any things really done Monday)
On Memorial Day itself, I helped myself to a cup of coffee in the morning and proceeded to use that energy to sit on my butt. It was off-and-on cloudy by noon, which gave me enough time to watch the film I had Netflixed but had laying around for two weeks, The Queen, which was hard to gather the muster to watch but well worth the wait. I then cleaned up a little before briefly entertaining Casey (he wanted to use our backyard, picnic-style, for lunch) and then starting a book I’ve had sitting around for weeks. A nap followed, some television after that, but things have finally wound down. It’s probably just in time. The critical number from this week/weekend is the number of dollars I’ve spent on God Knows What, and it’s time to bring it back to Earth. To that end, I went to the grocery store earlier and replenished the supplies around here. I had to make room for it in the fridge around all the leftover beer. Which leads us to the final number…

1 (number of celebratory drinks for a great time had)
Apple juice. Yep, it’s like that.

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May 24, 2007

(Some Old) Loose Ends Heading Into Memorial Day

It’s been a long two weeks, as spring is finally here and with it has come the arrival of spring softball and basketball. I play in two softball leagues and the teams could not be any different. Team A has won both of its games by the “slaughter rule,” meaning we were up by at least 12 runs after five innings, while Team B has lost both by the same rule, the specifics of which I cannot recall (it’s a different league) but are, because of our amazing ineptness, fairly irrelevant.

I encountered more amazing ineptness at the Five Boro Bike Tour, an all-day cycling event that bills itself as a nice, family-fun way to see all five boroughs of the city, which is technically true, as you indeed make bikefall within the legal boundaries of each New York City borough. I’m just not sure about the “fun” part. I did the Bike Tour two years ago, and my friend Ravi and I easily finished the 42-mile course in about three hours (a relatively brisk but by no means Armstrong-ian pace) after waiting for an hour to begin the ride in Battery Park. In 2005, there were 28,000 riders. This year, there were 42,000 riders. There were several delays – two of which lasted an entire hour – and I was forced to walk my bike up the Queensboro Bridge, which is closed for the event, because of the congestion. Worse yet, one of my two riding partners hit a 12-year-old boy when the boy abruptly stopped to retrieve something that had fallen off his bike; my friend ran over the light, or screw, whatever, and had finished looking up from his back tire when he hit the kid, full-speed. Everyone was alright, but my friend’s bike was broken, though he gamely got it fixed further down the route and accompanied us to Staten Island, and enjoyed a beer with us on the ferry back to Manhattan as we learned that Roger Clemens would once again be pitching for the Yankees. I’ll always remember where I was – but not because of you, Roger.

I can also honestly say that I no longer hate my apartment. We had the first of what will most likely be several barbecues on our back porch on Saturday, and despite a small instance of making a fool of myself later in the evening, it was a smashing success. One of our best friends is from North Carolina and is an expert at Actual Barbecue. Another southern friend would not allow us to call our event a BBQ if we were just cooking burgers and hot dogs, and she was insistent that we use the term “grilling” to describe our festivities if we proceeded thusly. Well, we had our barbecue, and it was fantastic. We had music, great food and were able to continue the party going late into the evening because neither of our upstairs neighbors were home.
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Book recommendation: I just finished Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, her 745-page biography of Lincoln and his cabinet. If you’re into that type of book, it is certainly worth the time. There’s so much in there that I wouldn’t want to ruin for any potential reader, so I won’t discuss it, but I will say that I actually cried when Lincoln was assassinated – and, amazingly, I knew this beforehand. The book is that powerful.

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May 23, 2007

Great Quote – Paul Theroux

By Paul Theroux, in a New Yorker article about the (completely insane) former dictator of Turkmenistan:

Turkmenbashi’s acolytes had recently pronounced him the “national prophet,” a harmless enough conceit if you’re a civilian, but a pathological, if not fatal, one in a despot. Turkmenbashi had written a sort of national Bible, called “Ruhnama” (“Book of the Soul”), and he regarded himself as an accomplished writer—a clear sign of madness in anyone.

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May 22, 2007

Cleaning Up

I don’t think I’m a “clean” person. I don’t “clean up” so much as I move things to less offensive parts of my room. My room basically rotates on a 6- or 7-month cycle of stop motion pictures, with increasing numbers of things moving slowly or drastically around the room in every frame. Culminating the cycle, I will throw much of it out, and the process will repeat itself.

I think this is because I am very good at coming up with excuses to do other things than clean. I will read, think about exercising, exercise, study baseball statistics and, worst of all, cook before I start sweeping or mopping. Even then, it’s rare the I give the apartment a good enough cleaning that I actually feel my work is done; usually, I resign myself to the fact that I’m never going to be done, and fail to convince myself to clean more often. Even tonight, I considered doing the remaining dishes – about 7 of them – before writing this, but put it off until the morning (they’ll just pile up after breakfast, anyway).

I think I have always been fairly insecure about my general cleaning habits, but I think I’m getting better. For instance, I’ll always clean up all but the smallest messes. A drop or two of orange juice never killed anyone. I will do the recyclables on something vaguely resembling the recyclables pick-up schedule. My proudest personal accomplishment, though, is becoming the guy who throws away all the newspaper circulars from my front step. This position that comes with exactly zero gratitude, and I’m a little sore about it, but I’m not about to give up my crown to any of my neighbors. I worked too hard to get it.

I think my general state of cleanliness goes back to my childhood, when my two brothers and I would tear up the house while waiting for my mother, and her dinner-creating powers, to return from her job as the town librarian. Over time, new things would pile up, get dirty and move around the house, until mom finally decided to go ballistic. At this point, us boys would mope around and tidy up, heads low, as mom raced from task to task, screaming at us. When the maelstrom was over, that meant the cleaning was about to come to an end. Sometimes the fights were bad; other times we made an immediate joke out if it. There’s one involving my mother, a hotel room window and a rubber Koosh ball that has had us in stitches that was deemed “an instant classic” over sodas about 10 minutes after it happened.

I think this is why I feel like I am never done cleaning. I used to have someone tell me when I was done. Now, I have to figure it out myself. I mean, I’m not a complete imbecile: I know when a floor is clean and the windows are washed. It’s just that there are some people who could literally clean forever (A fact I have learned by watching movies where people do cocaine, and infomercials), and I have to accept the fact that I am not one of them.

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May 17, 2007

Cold Weather Blues (from April)

I hate my new apartment with every fiber of my being. I detest this place to a degree that is hard to fathom. If I could live in a small room with one nice window in a nice place, I would prefer it to his horrible wreck of a living space. I hate this place.

My new apartment gets almost no ambient light except for in the early mornings, when I am allergic to ambient light. In the late afternoon, two windowpanes worth of waning sun filter through my roommate’s room, but that’s about it. The kitchen is almost entirely dark even during the highest of high noons, and the living room is depressingly quarter-lit by windows that look upon our narrow driveway, which is bordered by the neighboring house. There is also a motion-sensor light near the side doorway that goes on and off throughout the evening without any cause. I hate this place.

The kitchen always smells vaguely of the Indian food oft cooked by the previously tenants and the natural gas that the owners assure me is not leaking from the stove. The overhead lighting, which we largely ignore, is horrible fluorescent light in every room. There is an ancient air conditioner in our living room, and our shower is the worst shower in the history of man. In fact, the shower needs its own paragraph.

Words cannot accurately describe the inadequacy of this shower, but you can rest assured that if I were to bring this laptop into the shower with me to attempt such a feat, the laptop would likely survive the showerhead’s light-fog attempt at soaking the showerer. We have nothing in terms of water pressure, and what does come out is lukewarm, at best. Our water heater is so old that it cannot keep hot water hot; your best bet is to take a shower 30 minutes after the previous shower has ended. Of course, I get up earlier than my roommate, so I do not have this luxury in the mornings and have taken to enjoying my showers in the evening. Nevermind that I hate this; humans are adaptable by nature, and I WILL have the best shower possible. Doesn’t mean that I’ll like it, though.

The kitchen is rather large and presents a nice cooking area, but the kitchen itself looks old and shabby. It probably has not been overhauled in 40 years. The entire apartment reminds me of my grandmother’s house, which is just depressing. At least at my grandmother’s house I don’t have to cook for myself, pay for the outrageous gas heating bills and have the company of my grandparents. Here I do cook for myself, do pay astronomical heating bills, and am usually alone but occasionally with the company of my completely oblivious roommate, who could live at the South Pole as long as he could watch porn DVDs. He’s really a wonderful fellow, but I don’t think he hates this place as much as I do. Then again, it would be difficult.

Maybe I hate this place because I spent a good deal of time and effort making it livable, and there is a large amount of time and effort left to exert on that front and I have no intention of exerting it. I am, it appears, done. I would be much happier with a slightly increased standard of living around here, but I find it very hard to muster the energy it takes to fix this place up. Perhaps a good cleaning is in order; that usually gets me feeling better about things. But I love to do a good cleaning when the sun is out, flying through the windows and energizing me on a weekend morning. That won’t happen here. Every second I spent in here is like being in a movie theater – lifeless, stale, dark – only there’s no movie playing to get my spirits up.

So as it is, I’ve devised ways to keep my spirits up. I’ve gotten drunk, which isn’t unique to this apartment but it’s helped. I’ve cooked quite a bit, which is good for my bottom line, but I spend the saved money in my budget on things that I say I’ve “earned” by putting up with my own apartment, like new clothes or fancy meals (for me, a fancy meal costs more than $10). I’ve started writing a lot more, which is unquestionably good, but the nature of the writing (diary-style) isn’t conducive to publication, because who cares about me but me? I’ve started reading a lot more, but that’s more of a function of living near the end of the subway line and getting a seat on the train every morning – which, as an externality, is unquestionably the best thing about my new living space. That and the back “yard,” which is really mostly cement and is good for having large numbers of people over, but I get skittish when I’m hosting company, especially in such close quarters to my neighbors as I am now. We are bordered by an elderly Italian/Yugoslavian couple to the left – as in, they are from the region in Italy that has been taken by, and re-taken from Yugoslavia – a younger set of grandparents to the left, and two flower-children type women above us, who seem to be slightly older. They have twice politely cited us for loud noise-making, and my roommate horrified one of their buttoned-down guests on Saturday by inviting her into smoke-and-beer filled house. The living room table, on which I am now typing, was apparently so filled with party detritus that it would have been impossible for her to even set her keys upon it, led my roommate to begin a self-preserving rant about how were actually upstanding young professionals and that her friends had nothing to worry about, we weren’t always like this. She was likely not convinced, I am told.

My room is spacious but colder than the rest of the apartment, and I learned yesterday that there’s a crack in my windowsill that allows water run the length of the bamboo window shades I stupidly bought for $40 each and drip onto the windowsill where my phone usually rests. My room also features a back door that goes straight into the backyard, and due to the possibility that some enterprising individuals use this portal for ungranted access to my room, the landlords have conveniently installed a removable 2×4 across the door frame to prevent the door from opening in such a case.

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